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sorry if this is a redundant post. i'm trying to import the grateful dead movie soundtrack into my itunes. what's the best setting to use for this? i know it should be lossless but i dont have that much storage space. what is the difference between aac, aiff, and mp3 encoding at 320kbps? it also gives me the option of either 44.100 khz or 48.000 khz. is this a case where bigger is better? thanks for any help in advance.

i'm not an expert on this, but aac claims to sound better than mp3 at similar bit rates. aiff is an uncompressed format similar to .wav, so if you don't have much space you probably don't want to use that.

DH is right though, i personally have a very hard time distinguishing 160kbps mp3/aac from much higher quality encoding except probably lossless...but it all depends on YOUR ears. try testing some bit rates to see if you can hear a difference.

and if you can afford it, i would suggest getting an external hard drive to backup your dead in lossless format, that way if you ever want to make high quality CD's or DVD's you can still have the ultimate quality sound. they are pretty reasonable these days.

You've got to take into consideration the use. If you're not using anything but high-grade phones or you're going to play it in the car, you'd be wasting space with anything really good. Personally, I think that, unless you have ears like a bat, 160 or 192 mp3 would be more than fine on an iPod. Then again I'm sure there are folks around here who do have ears like bats and own very large HDs.